Jerry Bruckheimer On Plans For "Top Gun 2" and "The Lone Ranger"

Published May 17, 2011 at 8:09 AM | Updated at 1:44 PM CDT on May 30, 2012

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Super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s ready to take audiences back to “Top Gun” flight school, and he’s hoping Maverick still feels the need for speed.

With “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stanger Tides,” the latest sequel to one of his other blockbuster properties, hitting theaters this week, Bruckheimer tells PopcornBiz exclusively that he’s in the process of seriously developing a follow-up to the iconic 1986 film that made Tom Cruise a mega-star – and he wants Cruise in a Navy flight suit again.

“We're just trying to make a deal right now – It's difficult with all the parties who've been so successful since 'Top Gun,' so it's much harder,” Bruckheimer tells PopcornBiz, but he’s committed to convincing Cruise to sign on in some significant capacity. “I think you'd want Tom to do it – at least, I would. It would be hard for me to make it without him.”

Bruckheimer explains that he’s working on lining up the details before commissioning a screenplay, which he says will incorporate all the modern-day bells and whistles of 21st Century Naval air combat.

“We haven't done our research enough to know [what the new techniques are] – and we research the hell out of these things,” he says, “so we'd have to go down and see what the Navy's doing and what's going on in their world. And then I'll get a better sense where we're going to take it.”

Bruckheimer’s also looking to revamp the classic Western character “The Lone Ranger,” with Johnny Depp taking on the role of Tonto, and Armie Hammer reportedly being circled as Depp’s silver bullet-toting kemosabe.

"It's going to be a dramedy," he said. "It's not going to be a straight: you know, ‘Hi-Ho Silver!’ – although that will be part of it. But we're going to tell you the story of how we feel it would be really entertaining to audiences today.”